Being American in Europe, 1750–1860

Daniel Kilbride

Publication Year: 2013

While visiting Europe In 1844, Harry McCall of Philadelphia wrote to his cousin back home of his disappointment. He didn’t mind Paris, but he preferred the company of Americans to Parisians. Furthermore, he vowed to be “an American, heart and soul” wherever he traveled, but “particularly in England.” Why was he in Europe if he found it so distasteful? After all, travel in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was expensive, time consuming, and frequently uncomfortable.
Being American in Europe, 1750–1860 tracks the adventures of American travelers while exploring large questions about how these experiences affected national identity. Daniel Kilbride searched the diaries, letters, published accounts, and guidebooks written between the late colonial period and the Civil War. His sources are written by people who, while prominent in their own time, are largely obscure today, making this account fresh and unusual.
Exposure to the Old World generated varied and contradictory concepts of American nationality. Travelers often had diverse perspectives because of their region of origin, race, gender, and class. Americans in Europe struggled with the tension between defining the United States as a distinct civilization and situating it within a wider world. Kilbride describes how these travelers defined themselves while they observed the politics, economy, morals, manners, and customs of Europeans. He locates an increasingly articulate and refined sense of simplicity and virtue among these visitors and a gradual disappearance of their feelings of awe and inferiority.

Cover, Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

I have been working on this book for a while. I am glad to have at long last the
opportunity to thank the many people and organizations that helped me see it
to fruition.
My longest- lasting debt is to the Department of History at the University of
Florida and to the friends and colleagues I made there, whose fingerprints are all...

Routes of Four American Travelers in Europe

Introduction

In 1844 Harry McCall, a ne’er- do- well Philadelphian making the Grand Tour of
Europe, wrote to tell his cousin Peter what his travels had taught him about
Rome and the Romans. He was not impressed. “[W]e have no sympathies with
these people,” he explained. “We are not of them—and a great change must take
place before...

1. “English association,” 1750–1783

Like many colonials, Benjamin Franklin had mixed feelings toward Great Britain.
He had nothing but praise for English culture, Protestantism, and the common
law. He hoped that Britain would not oppress the colonies but, “like an affectionate
parent,” nurture their liberty and prosperity. Yet Franklin feared that
the very features that made him...

Having achieved independence, Americans had to redefine their relationship to
Eu rope, and especially to Great Britain. Many people were uneasy about a connection
of any sort. The young republic’s geopolitical situation was tenuous. An
enormous but sparsely settled territory, the United States confronted a number
of dilemmas: rivals...

Between 1820 and 1860 the United States became middle class.1 In some respects
the middle class’s rise drove a wedge between Europe and the American
republic. Middling Americans cherished the “egalitarian myth” that maintained
that any man could attain independence and even prosperity through
hard work. Americans contrasted...

Travelers were fascinated by the ways Europe did and did not seem to be joining
them in embracing a middle- class culture. They also kept a close eye on political
developments in the Old World. Since 1789, Americans had hoped that Eu rope
would throw off secular and religious despotisms, adopt republican governments,
and recognize the rights...

Conclusion

Thinking about American identity before the Civil War requires situating the
United States within Europe an civilization. We should take our cue from transatlantic
travelers, who insisted on doing so. Americans were receptive to Europe
an opinion on matters great and small. Antislavery travelers counted on that
openness when they pleaded...

Notes

Essay on Sources

In this book, I set out to understand what ordinary Americans from the era of the American
Revolution through the antebellum period thought about their travels in Europe. To
that end I concentrated on manuscript sources— diaries and letters— and now- obscure
published accounts. Of course, the women and men whose views this book investigates...

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